Grier Bros NP Front | GRIER BROS NP - Nickel-plated Grier Bros supt. style lamp with spade hook and butterfly handles, Loc-on 3 in. reflector with latch and J & T (Jacobson and
Turja) wire burner tip cleaner, marked on top GRIER BROS. PITTSBURG, PA, bottom marked PATENTED APR. 2,1912, NOV. 15, 1921, MAY 15, 1923, ex-Dave Thorpe collection (The Grier Bros. Co. was founded in 1839 in Pittsburgh, PA to manufacture miner's equipment. By the 1880s the company was very active in the manufacture and sales of oil wick lamps with branches in Hancock, MI and Dubois, PA. They produced a line of face and driver's wick lamps for both oil and Sunshine fuels including the popular STAR brand in a shield trademark (check out the Grier lamps in the oilwick lamp photos). As wick lamps started phasing out with the increased use of carbide lamps, the company started producing carbide lamp models perhaps as early as 1910. They marketed at least 26 different numbered carbide lamp models. In 1924, the Grier Bros. plant and product line was purchased by the Gem Manufacturing Co. and a year later a product line of carbide lamps with the GEM product name was introduced that led to at least 18 different GEM lamp models being advertised; see Pohs, Miner's Flame Light, pp 245, 429-434)